Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron

by Jonathan Strahan

  Afterward when he was walking about, ready to go to bed, I settled down to meekly playing cat. The food in my bowl was the cheap, dried sort like brown gravel, but I crunched some down to keep him happy. He stroked me heavily, called me Missus, then slopped some water in my bowl and went to bed. He didn’t seem to notice that the varnish on his coffee table was starting to pucker and yellow.

  Next morning he set off early in his van, giving me a whole day alone in his house. I didn’t waste it. Instead I set about twining and snaking around his furniture, my back bristling as my fur shed little flakes of moonlight. I wandered daintily and carefully along his mantelpiece, knocking over nothing, stopping now and then to rub my face against this or that. I licked all his spoons. I rolled slowly over and over across his rug like a fat, furry rolling pin. I tiptoed along the edges of his bookshelves, my tail tip flicking over title after title.

  The bailiff got home late, smelling of an unplanned pub stop. He came in, chucking his keys onto his hall table, and halted. Perhaps he noticed even before he put the lights on that there was something wrong with the smell of his house. He sniffed, then drew his hand back from the light switch, turned on his keychain torch, and went to check the gas in the kitchen. It was off, of course, so he risked turning on the light, then took a beer from the fridge and carried it into the lounge.

  From my place on the rug by the radiator, I sat and rumbled my purr, watching him all the time through half-closed eyes.

  Obviously I couldn’t see into his head, but I was pretty sure I could tell what he was thinking. He sat on the sofa, and then shifted a bit uneasily. Were the springs going? The seat seemed lower than usual. He reached for his beer, then paused and rubbed at the surface of the coffee table with his sleeve. There was a flower-shaped yellow discoloration in the very middle of it. He scratched his fingernail against it, looked up at the ceiling for drips or damp patches, and then shrugged and switched on the TV.

  The volume was turned up, so it was quite a while before he noticed the creaks. They were stealthy at first, but gradually grew louder, until at last he frowned and turned off the TV to listen.

  Silence.

  He stood and walked to the window, tweaking the blind, probably worrying that the sound might be somebody trying to break in. Then he heard another creak right behind him, and spun around just fast enough to see the coffee table moving its legs. It had drawn them slightly closer together, its feet rasping against the carpet with a faint fff noise.

  He stooped. He stared. He tipped the table on its side. He set it on its feet. He rattled it on its legs until its drawer fell out. He put the drawer back in and stood staring at it. Drawer? Since when did it have a drawer?

  Then he stiffened as, from all around him, there came a series of small groans and grumbles, as if a wooden orchestra were tuning up. Something on the mantelpiece gave a sound like a sigh. He staggered over and peered, looking for … what? Mice? Sighing mice? He paused in front of an old photograph showing two boys on neighboring swings, in floppy old-fashioned haircuts. There was a shadow behind the sunny day in the picture. It looked a bit like a woman’s face.

  With a clatter, the bookshelf threw off all pretense. It tottered forward, edge after edge, its pinewood blistering and peeling to reveal hand-waxed mahogany. Drawer handles emerged from the unbroken wood with a thunk like silencer rounds. The rug shivered, rolled, and writhed, its tassels withering and molting, its color deepening from marzipan to a rich chocolate. CDs shot gleaming from their boxes, spun together in the air like a Martian landing fleet, then broadened until they became glistening black vinyl. The CD stand itself contorted, blackened, and twisted until it started to look a lot like a wrought iron hat stand.

  Then, as one, the rebellious possessions began to glide, totter, and creak their way to the hall. Once there, they rasped and juddered, beating themselves against the wood of the door. Bang, bang, bang. The terrible drum of angry wood and metal, all jumping and stamping at once. Open the door. Open the door.

  I have to say, the bailiff showed some real guts. He tried to grapple with the coffee table, which by now had a clear chrysanthemum pattern painted on its top face, and held on even when the records started dive-bombing him. The furniture was having none of it, however. The largest and heaviest piece, a walnut sideboard, reared up like a particularly square-cut stallion and dashed the door off its hinges. It galloped out into the yard, overturning bins. The gashes in its woodwork started to heal. The same could not be said for the door.

  The bailiff had fallen to all fours and could only watch aghast as the furniture that no longer resembled his danced out into the moonlight. A photo in an ornately carved wooden frame capered past, its front face visible for a moment. The image of the two boys had almost entirely faded. The woman’s face was far clearer, pouting in an angry half smile. Did the face look familiar to him? Did it remind him of an old woman he had pushed past not long before, or a scruffy dark fifteen-year-old he had cold-shouldered in a minimart? Who knows.

  Leaving his door open to the night, he ran through the empty streets of the midnight town, following the thunder of wooden feet, the tinkle of fugitive spoons. He followed them down the muddy, stinking footpath that stripes across the sewage plant. He barely noticed something white streak past his legs and race down the path ahead of him.

  Out of breath, he reached our street just in time to see our door swing wide and the rebel possessions slide politely in, some pausing to wipe their wooden feet on the mat. Something ugly clicked into place behind the bailiff’s bland, ordinary eyes. Although he didn’t know what was happening, he now had an idea who might be to blame. He crossed the street and approached our door.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Seated on a wall beside him was his very own cat, his “Missus,” grinning in just the way cats don’t outside Wonderland. “You’d wake up Gran and upset her. I wouldn’t like that. And what are you going to do, anyway? Beat on an old lady’s door in the middle of the night? And say what? That she stole your stuff? The stuff that doesn’t even look like yours?”

  The bailiff hesitated, and the hand he had raised to knock slowly lowered.

  “Go home,” I said, in a way that made my pointy cat fangs show. He turned around and sloped off back the way he had come. “I’ll send your real cat home to you tomorrow!” I called after him.

  Getting my body back turned out to be a bit of a nightmare. The cat had decided to take a longer holiday and probably would have skipped town still wearing me if I hadn’t caught up with her first. She was sneaking out of a Tesco’s at the time, and when she saw me she tried to run for it. Fortunately I managed to get between her legs and trip her, at which point the fifteen packs of mackerel she was trying to shoplift spilled out from under her coat.

  She bit the store detective, and the police were summoned. Eventually Gran was called and picked her up from the station. By that point, several hours of harsh lights, condescension, and bad tea had cured the cat of her enthusiasm for being human. When we got home Gran shut us in a room together, and the cat sullenly unzipped so we could swap back.

  My body felt awful. Fake me hadn’t bathed or changed her clothes, of course. There was a fluffy taste in my mouth that I thought was probably the result of her grooming clothing with her tongue. I really hoped it wasn’t small rodent, anyway. There were lots of bruises and scratches, too. I’m always really careful with a borrowed body, but most creatures just seem to treat them the way a joyrider treats a car.

  There was a lot of trouble afterward, and not just because of the shoplifting. Fake Me had bunked off school all morning, and spent it kicking as many of the neighborhood dogs as she could find. She did turn up at school in time for lunch, but didn’t exactly get round to attending any lessons. I escaped expulsion only because nobody actually saw her eat the school gerbils.

  Oh well. I hadn’t put much effort into making friends or pretending to be normal at that school anyway. There didn’t seem to be much point, since I nev
er knew when I might have to lend my body to a pine marten or something.

  Gran was very angry. Gran was angry while hugging me. Gran was angry while walking around her lounge, touching each of her prodigal possessions with trembling fingers.

  Mum was angry with me. I could see that from her photo. That same angry pout over the grocery bags. Caroline! I told you not to do that! I meant it! Oh … but I suppose I’ll forgive you. Just this once.

  A few days later the bailiff came by again, without his van, just in time to catch me coming home from school. He looked abashed and uncertain as I strolled to my door and grinned at him in the way that fifteen-year-old girls probably shouldn’t, and cats occasionally do. To his credit, he didn’t beat around the bush or pretend not to know what he knew.

  “Listen. I … I think I may have tracked down some of your grandma’s possessions, and I might be able to buy them back. If I do that, do you think you could return my things? An exchange? There was … there was a photo of mine …”

  I felt a bit sorry for him, to be honest. But “things had progressed beyond that point” and there was nothing I could do.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and kind of meant it. “It’s too late. They’re gone.”

  A HANDFUL OF ASHES

  GARTH NIX

  “THERE’S THE BELL again,” groaned Francesca. She reluctantly lifted her eyes from the copy of An Introduction to Lammas, Night Curses, and Counter-Curses that she’d been studying, and looked across at the indicator board that dominated an entire wall of the servants’ dining room. “Miss Englesham this time. Whose turn is it to go?”

  “Mine,” answered Mari with a sigh. She had three books open on the table in front of her and was in the middle of making some very precise and careful notes that required great concentration. She balanced her pen back on its stand next to the inkwell, slid off the cuffs that kept the sleeves of her blouse ink-free, and stood up.

  “I’ll go for you, Mari,” said a cheerful young woman who was toasting her feet by the huge kitchen range, without a book in sight.

  “Oh no you won’t, Tess,” instructed a much older and larger woman who was making pie cases on a neighboring bench. “You’re finished for the day, and them sizars knows they only study as work allows. Which it don’t, right now.”

  “Yes, Cook,” said Tess, subsiding back into her chair.

  “Thank you anyway, Tess,” said Mari. “Cook is, of course, quite right.”

  Francesca made a face behind Cook’s back and handed Mari an apron. Cook was mistress of the kitchen and a powerful curse cooker, so they could not afford to cross her. Particularly as the two of them were sizars, poor students who were allowed to study at Ermine College in return for menial service. Ermine was one of the seven colleges for witches at the University of Hallowsbridge, the other six colleges being exclusively for wizards. Only Ermine and the wizard college Rolyneaux still continued the tradition of sizars.

  Mari tied the apron behind her back as she ran up the kitchen stairs and out across the North Quadrangle, being careful to stay on the path. Walking on the grass was prohibited except for senior members of the college or university, visiting dignitaries such as inspectors of magery, and the head gardener. The lawn was not to be touched by the feet of undergraduates, and certainly not by the ugly worn-out boots of a sizar.

  Across the quad, she slowed to take a shortcut along the narrow lane between the ancient, mossy stones of the western wall of Agstood Hall and the smooth brick of the eastern wall of the Oozery. It was the quickest way, though not without its perils, the foremost being that it was off-limits to servants and sizars. But, as it was already dusk, Mari thought it worth the risk in order to save time. The young ladies, as the sizars were supposed to refer to the proper, fee-paying undergraduates, were generally not very patient. Most of them came from homes with numerous domestic staff, and they did not adapt well to the far less available services of the sizars and the limited number of college servants.

  The Miriam Oakenwood Quadrangle on the other side was a much smaller version of the North Quadrangle. It was lined on two sides by an L-shaped four-story building officially called Oakenwood Hall but known to everyone as Mo’wood. It housed most of the first-year students. Mari went to the western arm and rapidly ascended to the top floor, where the best rooms were located, and knocked on the door that had a plain white card with “Englesham, Miss C.” inserted in its bronze nameplate.

  “Enter!”

  Mari pushed the door open. Four carefully made-up faces on four elegantly attired young women turned to look at her. The four were sitting on two leather chaise longues that were lined up opposite each other, with a low table in between that currently hosted a very expensive and definitely noncollegiate collection of tea things, including a large enameled bronze samovar that Mari was fairly certain she’d seen in The Mercury as being the property of the recently deceased Prince-Wizard Athenanan, sold for a record price at the auction disposing of his worldly goods.

  “You rang, Miss Englesham,” Mari stated calmly, though inside her heart was racing, and she stood on her toes, ready for flight, all prompted by the sight of her reception committee.

  Caita Englesham herself was a typically harmless first-year, if thoughtless. But the other three were third-year students, and a consistent problem for Mari and the other sizars. Aphra Lannisa was a bully of the worst stripe; Susyn Clairmore was a liar and a cheat; and their leader, Helena Diadem, was the worst of the lot, since in Mari’s opinion she was well on the way to becoming a bane-witch, though Diadem was too clever to let anyone in authority see that.

  “Yes,” said Englesham nervously, with a sideways glance at the others. “I had some questions.”

  Mari stood, waiting for the questions. None were forthcoming for several seconds.

  “Ah, I believe …” Englesham wet her lips and hesitated again. “I believe that you grew up in the servants’ quarters of the college, Mari?”

  “Yes, miss,” replied Mari woodenly. Lannisa and Clairmore were giggling, but Mari still couldn’t see where this was going. Everyone knew that she had been found on the steps of the porter’s lodge as a baby and had been taken in by Mrs. Garridge, the porter’s wife. She and her husband had died of the Great Ague three years previously, when Mari was sixteen, but not before Old Garridge, as everyone knew him, had managed to call in the many favors owed to him to have Mari made a sizar of the college, so that she might take her degree and thus ensure her future.

  “You’re smart, my girl,” he’d said on his deathbed. “Smarter than three-quarters of them here. You might even be mistress of the college one day. You get your degree and you’ll be set for life.”

  Or so he had thought. But the Great Ague had come again the next year, and the next, and twelve months ago had taken the former mistress of Ermine College. The new one, Lady Aristhenia, did not approve of the tradition of sizars. She liked her servants to be servants, she’d said, and her scholars to be gentlewomen.

  Since Lady Aristhenia’s installation as mistress, Mari had been doing a lot more serving and a lot less studying, and with her final exams only a month away, she feared that she would not pass, would not gain her degree, and then would either have to stay on simply as a servant or leave the college that she loved, to find her way in an economically depressed outside world that would not welcome an unqualified witch.

  “And you … um … weaseled … your way into becoming a sizar in the Beltane term three years ago,” continued Englesham, her eyes darting to the other girls and back again.

  I know who’s really speaking here, thought Mari. Helena Diadem.

  “Yes, miss,” she replied, trying to stay calm. “Is there anything I can do for you? More coal for your fire, perhaps?”

  “No,” said Englesham quickly, eager to be done with what she had been told to say. “It’s just that … we … that is I … I have found a scrap of the Original Bylaws of the college.…”

  Mari’s eyes narrowed. The Original
Bylaws were potent magical artifacts, written in Brythonic and inscribed on stone tablets in the Ogham script to bind everyone in the college to obey their draconian strictures. But fortunately for all concerned, some three hundred years previously the then mistress of the college, the fabled Alicia Wasp, aided by Witch Queen Jesmay I, had nullified the Original Bylaws and buried the stone tablets under the moondial in the Library Garden. Then Mistress Wasp had promulgated the New Bylaws, which were considerably more liberal and, being merely in Latin, much easier to read.

  As far as Mari knew, the stone tablets were still under the moondial, and even if they weren’t, it was very unlikely that Englesham could understand Brythonic, or read even a sentence in Ogham.

  It was clearly going to develop into some sort of attack upon her, but Mari couldn’t work out what the nature of it was going to be, or how the forgotten and nullified Original Bylaws were going to come into it.

  “I found a parchment,” continued Englesham. She looked over at the wall. “When I moved in, and the wallpaper had to be changed, really it was too awful …”

  Helena Diadem looked at her. Englesham gulped and continued.

  “There was a parchment under the plaster, and the workmen pointed it out to me. It was a rubbing of part of one of the old tablets. I was going to take it to my tutor, but Diadem said—”

  “That’s enough,” said Diadem. “Suffice to say, Mari, that we have found a paragraph of the Original Bylaws, which, curiously enough, concerns sizars in the college. We thought you should be the first to know, before it is invoked.”

  “That’s old magic,” said Mari. She tried to look unconcerned, but inside she was scared. “Deep magic. You shouldn’t mess with it.”

  “It’s only a sentence or two of the Original Bylaws,” sneered Aphra Lannisa. “Most sensible bylaws, we think.”